Our View: Mayor must end parking delays at BMO Center

Saturday

Dec 14, 2013 at 5:16 PMDec 14, 2013 at 5:16 PM

Brad Paisley is one of the top entertainers in the U.S., and when he came to the BMO Harris Bank Center recently, nearly 7,000 people came to see the dynamic singer-songwriter-guitar-playing sensation and his band.

About 45 percent of those people came from more than 65 miles away. For many of them, it was their first time in the Forest City.

First impressions become lasting impressions. The concert was great, the hospitality of BMO impresario Gordon Kaye’s crew was outstanding, and the remodeled arena glistened.

So far, so good.

There was just one, big problem, and it wasn’t the fault of the arena management or the Rockford Area Venues Entertainment Authority, which governs the BMO, Davis Park and the Coronado Performing Arts Center.

The problem was the great big parking delay caused by Mayor Larry Morrissey’s new parking scheme at multistory ramps.

Let us explain. The only way to get thousands of people in and out of an event at a stadium, theater or other large venue is to have people collect cash from drivers as they arrive to park their cars. That’s the practice at every large venue the Editorial Board members have attended.

It used to be done here, too. Until the Morrissey administration decided to fix something that was not broken. The mayor privatized parking. He apparently learned nothing from the parking privatization fiasco that preceded the early retirement of Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley.

The new scheme at downtown ramps requires drivers to take a ticket, wait for a gate to lift, park their cars, then line up to pay with a credit card at a machine — before they can get into the BMO!

That works when people are coming downtown in small numbers at different times. But it became a disaster when thousands of cars converged on the BMO to see Paisley. Lots of people didn’t know what they were supposed to do. The lines were long. The process was maddeningly slow, and the first impression on out-of-towners was not good. We’ve received complaints from locals, too.

Here’s one example: A Chicagoland businessman bought a suite for $3,000 to entertain clients at the Paisley concert. He was livid because his guests were delayed in getting into the building because of the parking hang-up. He told BMO officials that he was disgusted and would never return to Rockford.

If someone has a good experience, he or she may tell a couple of people. If patrons have a lousy experience, they’ll tell 10 people, maybe more.

This situation is intolerable. And we’re not sure why Morrissey approves of the situation, even after he’s been fully informed of the problem. After all, the mayor was the one who rescued the former MetroCentre by creating the venues committee, chaired by Mike Dunn, to reorganize the place. He did. Now Dunn chairs the RAVE Authority, and he is adamant that the parking problem must be solved.

It isn’t hard to do. Just return to the old way of collecting cash from drivers, speeding them to the parking ramps. Or make parking free and add $1 to each BMO ticket to cover the parking charges.

After all, RAVE still collects cash from drivers parking at four surface lots for BMO events. That doesn’t seem to a problem for the Morrissey administration.

RAVE is succeeding at its mission of reducing the BMO’s deficit and bringing more people downtown. The mayor should be applauding this success instead of trying to sabotage it with this unworkable parking slowdown.